Rating: 
Summary: Excellent and well researched
Review: This is an excellent and well researched book. I was expecting a book that was biased in one direction or the other regarding Wyatt Earp, because that appears to be the norm. However, this writer told both sides of the story: both the good and the bad. And, ultimately, Wyatt Earp comes out as a real person with all his flaws. However, he also comes out as a true American hero who represented law and order the only way he knew in a part of the country that had crooked sheriffs and political gamesmanship. I really enjoyed this book. I wish that this author would do the same sort of impeccable research on other old west icons.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Read
Review: This is one of the most interesting books I've ever read! The book is very well researched and is not written to do anything but present the facts as well as they can be unearthed through the records that exist. If you have an interest in history, particularly this era; I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF WYATT EARP
Review: THIS NEW BIOGRAPHY OF WYATT IS EXCEPTIONALLY WELL WRITTEN AND RESEARCHED, AS ATTESTED BY 697 FOOTNOTES. MANY OF THE REFERENCES ARE NEW MATERIAL FROM SAN FRANCISCO PAPERS. CASEY, A NEWSPAPER MAN HIMSELF, HAS MINED THE BANCROFT LIBRARY FOR REAL LITERARY GOLD. THE BIOGRAPHY HAS ABOUT 175,000 WORDS, CRAMMED INTO ONLY 344 PAGES PLUS ANOTHER 24 PAGES OF PHOTOS/MAPS AND 59 PAGES OF NOTES/SOURCES/BIBLIO. AND INDEX. THE DENSITY OF THE BOOK IS UNUSUAL, ABOUT 550 WORDS PER PAGE WITH RATHER SMALL TYPE (FONT). THIS BOOK SO FAR OUTCLASSES ALL OF THIS GENRE WITH ITS INCREDIBLE DOCUMENTATION. UP TO DATE WITH QUOTATIONS OF NEW SOURCE MATERIAL, AS GEORGE PARSONS "JOURNAL" WHICH IS JUST BECOMING AVAILABLE FOR NOT ONLY THE TOMBSTONE YEARS BUT FOR 50 YEARS TO THE END OF WYATT'S LIFE IN 1929. CASEY IS REMARKLY OBJECTIVE AND FACTUAL, LEAVING THE READER TO DRAW HIS/HER OWN CONCLUSIONS. IT RINGS LOUD AND CLEAR THAT WYATT WAS A MAN MARCHING TO HIS OWN DRUMMER, A MAN WHO SOUGHT JUSTICE BOTH WITHIN AND WITH
Rating: 
Summary: Wyatt Earp, Ambiguous Hero
Review: Those of us who grew up during the 1950's and 60's knew Wyatt Earp through TV Westerns and old movies, all made in an era that didn't tolerate much ambiguity between right and wrong. For us, Wyatt was a great frontier lawman and unquestionably a Good Guy if there ever was such a thing. Today, of course, moral ambiguity is fashionable and revisionist historians have conditioned us to look for the Dark Side in our heroes. And in fairness to the revisionists, heroes never do measure up to the pictures in our imaginations, with the simple facts of Wyatt Earp's life standing as a case in point. Far from being a professional lawman, he drifted into law enforcement at various times in his life simply as a job that had to be done. What really drove him were the fickle ambitions of the itinerant gambler, saloon keeper, adventurer, and small-time land speculator he was, hardly the stuff of heroic mythology. Nonetheless, the most remarkable dimension of Casey Tefertiller's biography is that Wyatt still emerges from it as a hero. The very fact that, in a time when life expectancies tended to be short, Wyatt repeatedly scrapes through extraordinary dangers and survives them all to die of natural causes in 1929 probably in itself fits one definition of heroism. Symbolic of the whole picture was the famous OK-Coral incident in which he leads the action, coolly wins his fight and, looking very much like the bullet-proof iron man his legend later turned him into, walks away without so much as a scratch anywhere on his body, the only armed participant in the bloody duel to do so. But the heroism went beyond his survival powers. Clearly, the man had a real magic about him, magnified by the fact that he clearly never relished violence and relied more on sheer force of will in performance of his law enforcement duties. He rarely fired his gun, and avoided even carrying it unless he had to. Maybe, once again, there is simply not enough documentation to support a reliable account, and Tefertiller is unwilling to indulge in imaginative reconstruction. But, boy, what a story we must be missing out on here! Despite its failings, this biography is enjoyable and informative, and is certainly a must-read for Old-West aficionados.
Rating:
Summary: a history book, not a novel
Review: With this book, Casey Tefertiller has moved the field of Wyatt Earp history into a new era characterized by scrupulous research and rigorous handling of source material. For more than a score of years, a charismatic, iconic figure has enthralled Earp afficionados with tantalizing secret manuscripts and mysterious sources. The iconoclastic Mr. Terfertiller has eschewed the use of this phoney-baloney, novelistic history and has attempted to expunge all traces of it from his book. "Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend" is a meticulously documented book and by far the most important biography written on the life of Wyatt Earp to date. Mr. Tefertiller provides a cursory overview of Earp's pre-Tombstone life in Chapter One (31 pages). Three supposed errors appear on the first page: 1. "the family... headed for California in 1863." The year "1863" is a typographical error as revealed by endnote [1] where Mr. Tefertiller correctly notes that the Earp party traveled in a train of forty wagons to San Bernardino in "1864." 2. "Two years later the Earps moved again, landing in Pella, Iowa, where Wyatt's younger brothers, Morgan and Warren, were born." This statement is correct, as written. Mr. Tefertiller only identifies the "male" members of the Nicholas Earp family by name (Newton, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan and Warren). The four female members of the family (Mariah, Martha, Virginia, and Adelia) are not specifically identified. Three of the girls died young, and Adelia married early. Adelia never lived in Tombstone and played no important role in the saga of Wyatt Earp's adult life. 3. "The growing family remained settled [in Pella] until the Civil War broke out." Mr. Tefertiller covers ten years of the Nicholas Earp family life with this brief sentence. In fact, the family moved to Monmouth, Illinois and returned to Pella. In 1852, Nicholas Earp traveled to California and left his family behind in the care of relatives. Mr. Tefertiller's book contains 402 pages with small type and narrow margins and crams a vast amount of Earp material between it's covers. Obviously a more complete treatment of Wyatt's early life was sacrificed to provide a more detailed account of Wyatt's adult years; the years of which, most Earp afficionados have the greatest interest. "Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend" presents a balanced account of the complex life of Wyatt Earp. This book is a must read for all students of Western history.
|
